Teacher Gift Set #1

After I made those paper shoes for our ladies' meeting, one of the ladies asked me to make a gift for her daughter's teacher as an end-of-year thank you. Since she had taken the shoe to work to show it off, another lady also commissioned a teacher gift and a third lady wanted a gift for her pastor's wife as well as around 100 favors for a ladies' meeting at the end of September.

So here is the first gift I came up with:



Let's see if I can explain my thought process for this one ...

She asked for a shoe and bookmarker with a teacher quote on it. Since it's the end of the year, and since I used to be a teacher, I immediately thought of one of my favorite teacher quotes -- "The three greatest reasons for teaching are June, July and August!" I wanted to make something that shouted, "Enjoy your summer break!"

So I went with a sandal instead of the fancier shoes I had made before. Then I made and decorated the notebook, using this tutorial. (I found the 4x6" scratch pads at Big Lots, 4/$2 in some really bright colors.) I added a strip of matching paper to the inside of the barrel of an RSVP pen to match.

Next came the purse, which I made from this tutorial. I added a palm tree die cut from one of my new Cuttlebug dies, and they looked great.

But I was still undecided on how to make the bookmarker ... until I thought of making a sunglasses-shaped bookmarker that would fold over the page. I absolutely loved how it turned out!



Here's a closeup view of the shoe, bookmarker and notebook. I looped the bookmarker over the shoe to illustrate how it can hold your place in a book. The shoe is designed to be the thank you note, with space to write a short personal note.



And here you can see how the sunglasses come apart to hook over the page.



Here is the inside of the notebook. I wasn't sure if I would be able to use the neon-colored scratch pads since they're so bright, but I really wanted to make some of those larger notebooks, so I bought them. I was pleasantly surprised by how well this patterned paper blended with it, while the solid brown cardstock toned down the neon effect.

So, how did I make the sunglasses? I found sunglasses clip art, enlarged it to the size I wanted, made a few adjustments (thickened the bridge of the glasses and altered the shape of the lenses), then cut it using a manilla file folder as my base. I used the fold in the file folder as the fold for my glasses. Then I cut matching pieces from my patterned paper and glued them to the file folder base. It wasn't as complicated as it sounds, I promise! :)